Business Litigation Attorney

Tampa Business Litigation Lawyer

Business litigation is the practice of resolving disputes between businesses, or between a business and the people it deals with, through negotiation, pre-suit demand, and, when necessary, a lawsuit or arbitration. In Florida the clocks that govern these disputes are shorter than most owners expect: a claim for breach of a written contract must be filed within five years of the breach under § 95.11(2)(b), Florida Statutes, and a claim on an oral or unwritten agreement within four years under § 95.11(3)(j). Some disputes carry their own fee-shifting rules: under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and under Florida’s non-compete statute, the losing side can be ordered to pay the winner’s attorney’s fees. Those rules change the math of whether to file, and they are where a business dispute is won or lost long before trial.

Cory Cannon handles commercial disputes for Tampa Bay businesses: owners, partners, landlords and tenants, vendors, and the many construction-adjacent companies that make up so much of this region’s economy. I have a multigenerational family background in construction, so I am fluent in how these businesses actually run: how contracts get signed and then ignored in the field, how a supplier’s account really works, how a partnership splits when the money stops flowing. We read the contract, the invoices, and the correspondence line by line, and we check the numbers before we argue about them. This page is the starting point; it explains the disputes we handle and routes you to the page that fits your problem.

Is This a Business Dispute or a Construction Dispute?

Because many of the businesses we represent build for a living, the first thing we sort out is which practice your problem belongs to. If your fight is about a construction project (getting paid for work, a lien on a project, a payment or performance bond, a delay, or a change-order dispute), those matters live in our construction litigation practice, which is built around chapter 713’s lien law and the construction-specific deadlines that decide those cases. If your complaint is about defective work itself, start at construction defects.

This business-litigation hub owns everything else: the commercial disputes a company has that are not about a specific construction project. That includes the business-operations side of a construction company: a fight with a former partner, a lease on your shop or yard, a supplier who shorted an order, a departing employee who took your customer list. A materials supplier suing over an open account, a subcontractor’s partnership dissolving, an equipment vendor that delivered the wrong machine: those are business-litigation matters even though the company is in the trades. When a dispute has a foot in both worlds, we sort the pieces and handle them where they belong.

The Disputes We Handle

Below is the range of commercial disputes this practice covers, with a link to the page that goes deep on each. Most business fights touch more than one of these at once (a partnership split that also involves a lease, a vendor dispute that also involves a non-compete), and we handle them together.

Breach of contract

The contract is the center of gravity in almost every business dispute. Someone did not pay, did not perform, delivered late, or delivered the wrong thing, and the question is what the agreement actually required and what the breach cost you. Florida enforces written contracts on their terms, and the deadline to sue is five years from the breach for a written agreement and four years for an oral one. Damages are usually the benefit of the bargain (the position you would have been in had the contract been performed) plus, where the contract says so, the prevailing party’s attorney’s fees. We prepare demands and pursue claims for clients seeking payment, performance, or other contractual remedies, and we start every matter by reading the agreement and its exhibits against what each side actually did. Our breach of contract page covers the elements, the remedies, and the deadlines in detail. If the contract is a construction contract on a specific project, see construction contract disputes instead.

Vendor and supplier disputes

Supply relationships fail in predictable ways: goods that do not conform to the order, an open account that goes unpaid, a shipment that never arrives, a price term the parties remember differently. When the goods are movable products, Florida’s version of the Uniform Commercial Code (chapter 672) supplies the rules for acceptance, rejection, and remedies on top of whatever the purchase order and invoices say. These disputes reward organization: the purchase orders, the delivery records, the inspection notes, and the account statements usually decide who is right. Our vendor dispute page explains how we pursue account and supply claims for buyers seeking remedies for nonconforming deliveries and suppliers seeking unpaid receivables.

Partnership and ownership disputes

When co-owners fall out, the governing law depends on how the business is organized: chapter 620 for partnerships, the Florida Revised Limited Liability Company Act (chapter 605) for LLCs, and the Florida Business Corporation Act (chapter 607) for corporations. Layered on top is the operating agreement, partnership agreement, or shareholder agreement: the private contract that usually controls how profits are split, how decisions get made, and how an owner exits. The common flashpoints are the same across all three forms: an owner who takes money or opportunities for himself, a freeze-out that cuts one owner off from information or distributions, a deadlock that paralyzes the company, and a dissolution fight over who keeps what. Owners have statutory rights that a co-owner cannot simply switch off, including the right to inspect the company’s books and records, and, in the right case, the right to bring a derivative action on the company’s behalf. Our partnership and ownership dispute page covers buyouts, books-and-records demands, breach-of-fiduciary-duty claims, and dissolution.

Commercial lease disputes

A commercial lease is governed first and last by its own text. The tenant protections that Florida law gives residential renters do not extend to businesses, so the written lease (its rent, renewal, maintenance, default, and holdover terms) controls almost everything about a shop, office, warehouse, or yard. A well-drafted lease has real force, while a one-sided lease may leave a tenant with little statutory backstop. We help landlords and commercial tenants assert claims involving unpaid rent, common-area charges and pass-throughs, repair and build-out obligations, personal guaranties, early termination, and holdover. Our commercial lease dispute page explains how these claims turn on the lease language and the payment record.

Non-compete and restrictive-covenant disputes

Florida has detailed statutory rules for enforcing non-competes. Under § 542.335, Florida Statutes, a non-compete or other restrictive covenant is enforceable only if it protects a legitimate business interest (trade secrets, confidential information, substantial customer relationships, or goodwill) and is reasonable in duration, geographic area, and line of business. The prohibition of ordinary competition, by itself, is not a legitimate business interest. For a former employee, a restraint of six months or less is presumed reasonable and one longer than two years is presumed unreasonable; a court may narrow an overbroad covenant to a permissible scope. The statute also awards attorney’s fees to the prevailing party, which raises the stakes on both sides.

Two recent developments matter. Florida enacted the CHOICE Act (§§ 542.41 through 542.45) in 2025. It establishes a separate framework for certain non-compete and garden-leave agreements and may permit covered terms lasting up to four years. Whether the Act applies, and how it interacts with § 542.335, depends on the language and circumstances of the specific agreement, so agreement-specific review is important. The federal rule that would have banned most non-competes nationwide never took effect: a federal court set it aside in 2024 in Ryan LLC v. FTC, and the FTC later abandoned it, so Florida’s statutes continue to govern. Our non-compete page covers both statutory frameworks and potential remedies for clients seeking to enforce contractual rights or challenge a restriction that impairs their ability to work.

Tortious interference

Sometimes the party that damaged your business was not on the other side of a contract with you at all: a competitor lured away a customer under an exclusive agreement, or induced a key employee or vendor to break with you. That is a tortious interference claim, and Florida requires four things: a business relationship or contract, the defendant’s knowledge of it, intentional and unjustified interference, and damages caused by that interference. The word that decides most of these cases is unjustified: ordinary, lawful competition is privileged, so the claim turns on conduct that crosses a line, such as using another company’s trade secrets, making misrepresentations, or inducing a breach the defendant knew was wrongful. Our tortious interference page explains where the line sits and how clients pursue and prove these claims.

Indemnification and risk-shifting

Many commercial disputes are really about who agreed, in advance, to absorb a loss. Indemnity clauses, hold-harmless provisions, additional-insured requirements, and limitation-of-liability terms are the machinery businesses use to shift risk down a chain of contracts, and when a claim lands, those clauses decide who must pay or respond. These provisions are enforced largely as written, with some statutory limits in the construction context, and reading them correctly can flip the entire economics of a dispute. Our indemnification dispute page covers claims to enforce indemnity and hold-harmless obligations, declaratory relief concerning those duties, tendering a claim to the responsible party, and the interaction with insurance.

Business Torts and Unfair-Practice Claims

Florida law supplies several overlapping theories for business injuries caused by deceptive, disloyal, or predatory conduct. The Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA, §§ 501.201 through 501.213) reaches unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts in trade or commerce. A business harmed by another company’s deceptive or unfair practices may have a claim under the statute. Section 501.211 addresses actual damages, and section 501.2105 permits the court to award reasonable attorney’s fees and costs to the prevailing party after judgment. The fee provision runs both ways, so a business that files an unsuccessful FDUTPA claim may be ordered to pay the opposing party’s fees. FDUTPA has limits, including restrictions on claims that amount only to breach of contract and on the measure of recoverable actual damages.

Depending on the facts, deceptive or predatory conduct also surfaces as breach of fiduciary duty (common when the wrongdoer is a partner or co-owner; see partnership and ownership disputes), as tortious interference when a competitor targets your contracts, or as civil theft or misappropriation of trade secrets. We evaluate which theory actually fits the conduct and the damages, because pleading the wrong one (or piling on claims that do not survive a motion to dismiss) costs credibility and, with FDUTPA in the mix, can cost fees.

How We Work a Business Dispute

Every matter starts with the paper. The contract and its exhibits, the invoices and account statements, the emails and texts where the deal was really made or broken, and the operating or partnership agreement when owners are fighting. Business relationships generate a documentary trail, and the trail usually answers the question before any witness does. We assemble it first, build a timeline, and identify the deadline clocks: the limitations period, any contractual notice or cure requirement, and any shortened deadline the agreement imposes.

Then we check the numbers. A damages claim is only as good as the math behind it, so we trace each dollar to an invoice, a payment, a lost sale, or a contract term and support the claimed amount from the start. For our construction-adjacent clients, that fluency is the point: we can read a schedule of values, a supplier’s account, or a back-charge and tell whether the money actually lines up, without needing anyone to translate the industry for us. Where a dispute turns on a genuinely technical question (a building condition, an accounting reconstruction, a valuation for a buyout), we retain independent licensed professionals, including engineers, whose analysis supports the claim.

Most business disputes settle. Many commercial contracts require mediation or arbitration before or instead of a courtroom, and even those that reach court usually resolve short of trial. The cases that settle well are the ones prepared as if they will be tried, so that is how we build every file: documents organized, math checked, and the theory pressure-tested early, while there is still time to change course cheaply.

Florida Business-Dispute Deadlines and Fee Rules

The table below summarizes the statutes that drive most of the disputes on this page. Contracts can shorten some of these periods and add their own notice requirements, and every deadline has fact-dependent exceptions, so confirm your dates with a lawyer rather than relying on a summary.

Who Pays the Attorney’s Fees, and What We Charge

The default American rule is that each side pays its own lawyers. Business litigation is full of exceptions, and they drive strategy. Many commercial contracts contain a prevailing-party fee clause, which means the winner’s fees become part of what is at stake. Several statutes add their own fee-shifting: FDUTPA (§ 501.2105) and the non-compete statute (§ 542.335) both let the prevailing party recover reasonable fees. An adverse result can add the other side’s fees to what is at stake, so we evaluate that exposure before recommending that anyone file.

Many business-litigation matters are handled hourly. Depending on the matter, we may discuss a flat-fee, hybrid, or contingency arrangement. The written fee agreement controls the scope and terms of any representation.

Related Problems, Different Pages

A construction project. If the dispute is about payment, liens, bonds, delay, or change orders on a specific job, it belongs in construction litigation, which is built around chapter 713 and the construction-specific deadlines that govern those fights.

Defective work. If your core complaint is the quality of the construction itself (water intrusion, structural movement, systems that do not work), that is a construction defect claim, governed by different statutes and a strict statute of repose.

An insurance company. If the party refusing to pay is an insurer that underpaid, delayed, or denied a property claim, start at our property insurance claims practice: different statutes, different deadlines, and different leverage than a dispute with another business.

A Construction-Industry Background You Can Hear in the First Call

My multigenerational family background in the Florida construction trades helps me read a supplier account, a subcontractor’s partnership records, or a shop lease and determine early whether the money and the paper line up. Early attention to those records can avoid unnecessary litigation expense. When a matter requires technical expertise, such as a building-condition analysis, accounting reconstruction, or business valuation, we retain independent licensed professionals whose work supports the claim.

If you have a business dispute in Tampa Bay or the surrounding communities, contact us to request a consultation. Bring the contract, invoices or account statements, and the correspondence concerning the dispute. Consultation and fee arrangements depend on the matter.